As the topic says why do you love science, what about it makes you yearn for the knowledge? What science is your favorite?

For me I love the beauty of science, if you don't understand optics can you truly enjoy a rainbow? Science for me is about enriching my every day experience and giving me a greater appreciation for every thing around me.

Feynman said it best "If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in."

I love the feeling of epiphany when you realize the principle behind something that effects every day life, like today ice is slippery because the compression of your foot causes a small layer of water to form, most solids don't get slippery because their liquid form is less compressed then the solid form. (im not sure that thats really true but it mad sense to my frozen mind when i was outside today)

Why do I love science? I dunno. I, I just like to understand things. I suppose I also like the pragmatic aspect that knowledge can be put to use to better our lot, but that's not the reason I'm into it. It's kinda like sex; it might have constructive, beneficial results, but that's not why we do it.

My favorite is biology; I am in fact a (currently ronin) biology major.

Far away boys, far away boys, away from you now.I'm lying with my sweetheart, in her arms I'll be found.

I love science because it allows one to see through the surface to the truths that lie within. It's speaking the language of nature; asking her questions, and obtaining answers from her. Sometimes, just listening. She has much to say, if only you know how to listen.

For a variety of reasons, I like it when my beliefs are true. There are two methods of achieving this.

Changing reality to fit my beliefs is the hard way, though strangely, some people do insist on pursuing this course of action.

Science provides a method of changing my beliefs to fit reality, and it has been experimentally shown to be fabulously successful in this role. Also, the concept of testing ideas to establish their truth or falsity makes sense instinctively too, which is a nice bonus.

In my case, it's definitely a combination of utility and wonder. I'm going into conservation biology (specifically of felids) because I feel that with the threats our biota faces it would be irresponsible of me not to. But, I'm driven by the incredible nature of these animals, and the sheer number of secrets that we have to learn about them. But, knowing about animals is pointless if they would be wiped out from the Earth in a couple decades. That's where conservation comes in. It's strangely circular.

Because by better understanding the world around us, we can better understand our place in it. By better understanding how we operate and where we came from, we can be better human beings. More information is always good.

Furthermore, I view the pursuit of science as being one of the professions that furthers the human condition, adding to the content, rather than just the bandwidth.

... with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.

Combining the last two posts, I am going to point out that destruction of biodiversity is like burning down libraries. Sins are usually associated with religions, but if science is my belief system, I think the term fits.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Because I love the feeling you get when you can connect something theoretical to something real. When you first learned [math]{at^2 \over 2}+vt+x[/math] was the integral of [math]at+v[/math] was the integral of acceleration and suddenly it all made sense.

It works, Bitches.

Or something like that. I know there have been greater eureka moments for people 'round here but that's one that I remember being

I like that I can produce (mostly) objective proof of my claims, and it's ever so rewarding to jump through a series of mathematical hoops to finally arrive at something intuitively expected (and occasionally better still to find something completely contrary to inuition). It's easy to 'think' things, but the ability to prove something (even in a hand-wavey way) seems to give so much more validation to those thoughts, so what I think ends up fairly immune to other peoples opinions.

Besides, I've generally been better at it than my classmates, so I get to appreciate it simply so it can fuel my arrogance.

Also, I've really enjoyed scientific collaborations. I love that I can hit a wall with a problem, and talk about it with a peer, and have them give me a suggestion that makes me want to run back to lab. Of course! Why didn't I think of that?

I love being at the cutting edge of the knowledge front, and knowing that any questions I have that can't be found in what I'm presently reading can't be found because no one knows the answer. That I can say "Huh, if x and y mean blahblahblah, then maybe knocking down x and adding z will make wakawakawaka" and being able to test it.

Most great discoveries happen not with a "Eureka!" but with a "Huh, that's odd".

... with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet.

The esoteric concepts are great, but I find that the most marvelous, unexpected epiphanies are when you discover the predictive power for everyday things, as mentioned for ice. I'm partial to materials science in this regard. We grow up thinking of different materials (glass, plastic, metal, wood) as arbitrarily different, and too often people never learn that they follow the same rules. Going from "they're different materials, of course they're different" to "I can make polyethylene clear or opaque just by changing the cooling rate" is satisfying on practical and theoretical levels.

For me, science is like an intellectual Swiss Army Knife; a powerful tool for gaining knowledge and understanding. I love it for its effectiveness. I wouldn't say that science itself makes me yearn for knowledge, though. It is simply a tool subservient to my curiosity, with the most awesome side effect of increasing my depth of observation. I guess you could say I'm a big fan of the "observation" portion of the scientific method. As for my favorite subset of science, I'd have to go with fluid dynamics; it's so chaotic, and yet so classically deterministic. And in the language of my people, it's "trippy-ass shit, yo."

Because I can't imagine not wanting to know things and science is the method we developed to help us learn things while making the fewest number of mistakes possible. I realize that it sounds really cold but helping people is secondary to my reasons for wanting to understand the world, I want to have knowledge for the sake of having knowledge. If it helps people that's great and honestly there's not much knowledge that will never help anyone.

I can't say that there's any one reason why I love science (physics in particular). Certainly one part of it is the wonderful way in which the basic stuff tends to obey simpler rules involving their abstractions--e.g., all of (frictionless) classical mechanics can be reduced to one equation, [imath]\delta S = 0[/imath], that is an abstract statement about an abstraction from the Lagrangian, which is an abstraction from the kinetic and potential energies, which are abstractions concerning the positions, velocities, masses, and forces of a system.

Another part is the inherent awesomeness of some results--for example, consider sound waves. In solids and liquids, it's clear that the "springiness that supports the wave" is the electromagnetic force between the molecules; in a gas, however, it's not so obvious--the molecules are far enough apart that the intermolecular forces don't really affect much. It turns out that[Explanation for those of you who don't do physics]

Spoiler:

the speed of sound in air can be written as [imath]c_{air}=\sqrt{\frac{\displaystyle\gamma k T}{\displaystyle m}}[/imath], where [imath]\gamma[/imath] is the adiabatic constant for the gas, k is Boltzmann's constant, T is the temperature, and m is the molecular mass. Compare this to the speed of sound in a solid or liquid: [imath]c_{s,l}=\frac{\displaystyle B}{\displaystyle \rho}[/imath], where B is the bulk modulus (the larger it is, the less compressible the medium is) and [imath]\rho[/imath] is the density.When we compare these two expressions, we see that

Korrente wrote:Because I love the feeling you get when you can connect something theoretical to something real. When you first learned [math]{at^2 \over 2}+vt+x[/math] was the integral of [math]at+v[/math] was the integral of acceleration and suddenly it all made sense.

It works, Bitches.

Or something like that. I know there have been greater eureka moments for people 'round here but that's one that I remember being

I had the exact same reaction with those equations - we learned them in algebra based physics in high school, but once I learned calc, I just beamed when I suddenly understood.

I've had other moments like that - often when connecting information from one class to information learned in another. I love the how connected it all is!

KingXimana wrote:I love the feeling of epiphany when you realize the principle behind something that effects every day life,

I love science because it gives me (Watchmen's) Dr. Manhattan's superpower ability to use mental powers to disassemble any device and spread the components out into a 3D array, delve in and disassemble any part as well, inspect geometry and inspect operation, then collapse them back into a whole and watch the interplay of connections during normal operation.

This works with DVD players, it also works on individual transistors. When Einstein rode along with a light beam, when Steinmetz knew where to apply his hammer, and when Tesla first saw the 3-phase rotor start turning, they were pulling exactly the same stunt. Download some Science into your subconscious, and it all becomes SculpturePoetryMusic which frees you from the mental limitations experienced by nearly everyone else.

Well loosely off science, I love maths since it'll be the first language that we talk to aliens with. As far-fetched as it sounds, it is true.I also love how it simply just works and theres no such thing as subjectivity to skew the truths of the universe.

Think of your parents. Now your grandparents. Now think back farther. Farther. back to our last common ancestor with the chimps. Now farther back; 160 million years or so, to our last common ancestor with the kangaroo. Now farther, to our last common ancestor with the lizards. Okay, now farther back still... farther... eventually you will find we are contiguous with non-life. We are the same stuff that makes up the stars and the rest of the cosmos; we are the universe, conscious, and trying to understand itself. If that at some level doesn't stir you....... well, okay so I might be a little drunk, but still! All life is contiguous with abiotic matter!! And that!, well, that's something.

Far away boys, far away boys, away from you now.I'm lying with my sweetheart, in her arms I'll be found.

Coffee wrote:Think of your parents. Now your grandparents. Now think back farther. Farther. back to our last common ancestor with the chimps. Now farther back; 160 million years or so, to our last common ancestor with the kangaroo. Now farther, to our last common ancestor with the lizards. Okay, now farther back still... farther... eventually you will find we are contiguous with non-life. We are the same stuff that makes up the stars and the rest of the cosmos; we are the universe, conscious, and trying to understand itself. If that at some level doesn't stir you....... well, okay so I might be a little drunk, but still! All life is contiguous with abiotic matter!! And that!, well, that's something.

Coffee wrote:Think of your parents. Now your grandparents. Now think back farther. Farther. back to our last common ancestor with the chimps. Now farther back; 160 million years or so, to our last common ancestor with the kangaroo. Now farther, to our last common ancestor with the lizards. Okay, now farther back still... farther... eventually you will find we are contiguous with non-life. We are the same stuff that makes up the stars and the rest of the cosmos; we are the universe, conscious, and trying to understand itself. If that at some level doesn't stir you....... well, okay so I might be a little drunk, but still! All life is contiguous with abiotic matter!! And that!, well, that's something.

All of it except for C h u c k N o r r i s of course.. abiotic matter is contiguous with *him*

But yeah I feel ya there. we are all just fused hydrogen helium and traces of lithium.. until you get down to the really* small bits.

edit: Also I thin Randall said it best.. I love science "because it WORKS bitches!"

Science is a process that has elevated our species far above any other animal. This process has given us the power to completely reshape our world and is leading to the point where we can reshape other worlds. We learn, we evolve, we become more successful. Science is our biological destiny. (Hopefully our moral evolution will keep up.)

Science is a process that has elevated our species far above any other animal. This process has given us the power to completely reshape our world and is leading to the point where we can reshape other worlds. We learn, we evolve, we become more successful. Science is our biological destiny. (Hopefully our moral evolution will keep up.)

Portal is such a quote goldmine. Especially the second."Four walls, a floor and a ceiling. Good enough for science.Not aperture science!"

The Reaper wrote:I'm still fine with people having reactors, and still against them weaponizing the leftovers.

Walter Bishop wrote:Why would anyone kill a scientist? What have we ever done?

I love science because of the ability to understand why something made do it and why, this makes us realise how unique and lucky our planet is in comparison to other planets and astral bodies. Someone said that science makes the world less special because you are able to explain why something does it's action, but I think it makes it even more spectacular because you realise that without this hiearchy of actions and processes, the world in which we know would not be in existence today with all it's principles. Marie Curie said "In life nothing is to be feared, it is to be only understood." And I find this saying incredibly true, we fear unknown objects, but when we discover their hidden properties we soon come to understand why thing are that way.

Proper application of science allows us, slowly and haltingly, to become slightly less wrong about how the natural world works. In other words, science imposes an evolutionary selection pressure on memes. (Well, some of them--those related to describing the natural world.)

To adapt Churchill: Science is the worst kind of natural philosophy, except all the others that have been considered.

Because the results are unprecedented: ideas that have been subjected to the process become usable predictive tools; even when they are later shown to be incomplete (which is likely to be the eventual fate of every theory we have), they'll have value as 'lies told to children'--simplifications with explanatory power. And, of course, future theories will be constructed on the foundation they provide. So from that point of view, science is what lets us build the most enduring human construct we'll ever have--an edifice of ideas to explain the behavior of everything, everywhere, forever.